Do away with black borders on mobile phone video - make YouTube friendly

[Matt Sergiou]

Hi...

Some time back I took some moving street video shots on my phone and have since converted them to MP4. What I want to do is use these to make a short YouTube documentary. Unfortunately, what I didn't know at the time was how the video would look when I was filming it on my phone. As you'll guess, the actual video footage once on PC is different to how it looks on the phone; it's got big black borders on either side.

I've tried numerous ways (and spent hours) trying to find some method of trying to get rid of or at least dramatically lessen the big black borders on either side of the moving video footage as I think it'll irk and annoy the viewers (as it does me). Can I get rid of these borders? Or at least lessen them and (or instead) also stretch the video footage to make it more present on the screen instead of the black borders?

Video specs in Adobe are: Frame Size: 854 / 480

Thank you.

[Jeff Bugbee]

Did you shoot your video portrait mode? If so, there's not much you can do. If it's 4k, you could zoom in and do a "pan and scan" but stretching the video always looks terrible. Honestly, your best bet here is to reshoot in landscape.

[Matt Sergiou]

Thank you for answering, Jeff.

[Richard van den Boogaard]

Fitting a portrait style shot video inside a 16:9 frame always is a challenge. That is why I always tell people to turn their phones sideways when I see them making a video. Unless, of course, you only want to use it for social media in portrait mode (e.g. instagram, tiktok).

What might help save this, is to use Topaz VideoAI to upscale the footage to a size that is well beyond what you're editing in in PPro, so you have enough pixels to fill a 16:9 frame.

What a lot of editors also do, is to upscale the footage in PPro to fit the vertical frame (so you only have black bars on the side), then duplicate the clip and scale up the lower one to a level that also the black bars on the side dissappear and then put a camera blur effect on the lower clip.

Hope this helps.

[Matt Sergiou]

Thank you for your time Richard.

Topaz Video AI looks quite pricey, so I think I might give that a miss at the moment, especially if I'm biuyng it for just this one requirement, which might not work in the end. 

I've tried to 'blur effect' the black border away as you mention. I've watched a number of YouTube videos on this, but for some reason am failing to get the desired effect in any form whatsoever, and I think I'm doing it right? (Control, Alt, Drag, then click on bottom of two bars of video media - the original, not the copied version - then go to 'effects' and 'scale' and drag to make bigger). But, no. nothing happens. I can't think why it won't work for me when it looks so straightforward.

I could really do with some assistance. 

Frame Size: 854 / 480

[Matt Sergiou]

P.S.

when I drag, I don't see anything happening to video - I don't see any background from the video covering up black borders.

[Richard van den Boogaard]

Please share a clip of your video via Dropbox or sth and I'll process it for you with a PPro project file, so you can learn how it's done.

We're here to help.

[Matt Sergiou]

Thank you. I'm going to work now, but when I return I'll send you something along. Will a short clip suffice? You don't want the whole thing?

[Richard van den Boogaard]

A short clip will do just fine.

[Matt Sergiou]

Please find attached a clip. I hope it's easily accessible? 

[Matt Sergiou]

Hi there Richard. Hope you're well? 

Just checking in to see if you recieved the clip okay, or would you prefer me to send it via DropBox?

Regards,

Matthew.